II. Comprehension.

Exercise 1. Find where in the text it is said

a). that in his portraits Goya showed whether he liked or disliked his sitter.

b). that illness radically changed Goya.

c). that his “The Caprichos” freed the world of the subconscious.

d). that he painted even on the walls of his country house.

Exercise 2. Find in the text the answers to the following questions:

a). When and where was Goya born?

b). Where did he find his style?

c). What did his son write about his portraits?

d). When did his “The Caprichos” appear?

e). How did Goya depict war?

Exercise 3. Say whether these statements are true or false

a). Goya spent his childhood in Madrid.

b). He didn’t like to paint portraits of his friends.

c). His painting “Charles IV on Horse-back” shows his intelligence.

d). Goya condemned war in his series “The Disasters of War”.

e). Goya could sell his “The Caprichos” for fear of the Inquisition.

f). In his etchings one can see twisted imagination and supernatural visions.

III. Speech Practice.

Exercise 4. Describe Goya’s painting “The Condesa del Carpio”.

Exercise 5. Prove that Goya’s style chanched with years.

Exercise 6. Make a plan of the text and retell it.

IV. Discussion Points.

Exercise 7. There is the inscription at the foot of one of his etchings from “The Caprichos”: The dream of reason produces monsters: Comment on it.

Active Vocabulary

sitting

to be affected by

liking

revulsion

magic technique

artistry

to be silhouetted

a single wash of paint

simplified complexity

rare gift

imaginative pictures

interior world

palette

etching

Keys.

Ex.1. a - 2; b - 5; c - 7; d - 9.

Ex.3. a - F; b - F; c - F; d - T; e - T; f - T.

Text 9

І. Reading.

Read the text « Edgar Degas » and do the exercises given after the text.

Edgar Degas (1834—1917)

Edgar Degas was closely associated with the Impressionists and even participated in seven out of eight exhibits held by the group. He shared their taste for light colours and a spot tech­nique, but rarely if ever worked out of doors, believing that art­istic creation lay within the imagination or at least in the memory of an experience. From the very beginning of the Impressionist movement, Degas insisted on using the term "independent" painter to distinguish himself from the other painters.

In his paintings, space and figures are integrated with almost too great a diligence; the rooms are perfectly construct­ed in perspective, the human body is analysed ruthlessly, every part fitting together, the gestures and poses are carefully bal­anced, and the juxtaposition meaningful.

Degas became interested in dancers at the dancing classes of the Opera, in the movements and poses he could explore in their various steps and positions. Each painting occasioned an extensive series of studies. In fact he watched the dancers not only when they were at the bar, or resting , but every moment of their long hours of practice, weariness and rest: when they were paying attention to their master's criticism, and when they were at ease, when they stretched, yawned or adjusted their costumes.

The paintings of horses and race-courses touched on the same problems as the paintings of dancers. Degas gave a true rendering of the dynamic movement and the superb lines of the limbs. The jockeys' colours and the carriages of the spectators served as foils for the horses, in a space cut by diagonals and by increasingly bolder asymmetrical openings. The composition is strictly balanced as a harmonious whole, with an illusion of a development in time confined in a limited space.

Degas' ability to grasp and convey the crucial moment in a scene of swift movement remains unparalleled and is apparent in all his paintings, even in those late works in which he invests new themes (a woman drying her hair or ironing clothes) with a monumental grandeur of composition.

Degas like Monet, loved to return again and again to the same subject, in endless variations of handling and viewpoint, creat­ing an extraordinary relationship between the exploration of the subject and the use of the imagination and memory.

A superb example of his later style is the pastel "A Dancer on the Stage", which gives a wonderful impression of a ballet-dancer almost floating into the brilliant light of the stage from the obscurity of the "wings". It is miraculous in its suggestion of quivering movement.

He tried new approaches in his later years; the dancers were no longer studied in poses taken from actuality or captured in the spectacular moment of the arabesque. The dancers break forward into the foreground, almost bursting out of the picture space and are brought together from a distance scarcely held within the range of the spectator. Their "tutus"* are fringed with flashes of colour which vividly demonstrate the rotation of the figure.

Technically Degas was faced with a conflict between his linear tendencies and an impressionist feeling for brilliant, dissolving colour. Pastel became his exclusive and most suitable medium. With coloured chalks he was able to draw in a linear manner and give colour to his figures at the same time. This solution enabled him to keep the forms solid and to make them move, two elements often lacking in orthodox outdoor Impressionism.